Emma reached the nadir of her career during the aftermath of President McKinley's assassination. With the memory of Alexander Berkman's fate still festering in her heart, she said: "Leon Czolgosz and other men of his type ... are drawn to some violent expression, even at the sacrifice of their own lives, because they cannot supinely witness the misery and suffering of their fellows." Even before her attitude was known, she was arrested as an accomplice of Czolgosz and treated with extreme savagery before being released for lack of evidence.
Even more painful to her was the obtuseness of those anarchists who condemned Czolgosz's act as wanton murder. Ironically enough, even Berkman wrote from prison to disapprove of the shooting and to differentiate it from his own attack upon Frick; in his opinion the killing of McKinley was individual terrorism and not a deed motivated by social necessity. Emma was shocked by this argument, since to her both acts were inspired by the same high idealism and spirit of self-sacrifice. Unlike Berkman, who had come to see the futility of terrorism in a country like the United States, she was more interested in the incentive than in the effectiveness of an assassination. She was ostracized for her loyalty to Czolgosz and, as a consequence of his execution, suffered severe depression.
Once Emma Goldman had mastered the English language, she was not long in wishing to establish a periodical that would carry the message of anarchism to those whom she could not reach in person. Outbreaks of strikes in this country and increased revolutionary activity in Russia only made her more eager for a magazine of her own. In 1905 she was serving as manager and interpreter for Paul Orleneff and Alla Nazimova, who had come to the United States for a theatrical tour. When Orleneff learned of Emma's ambition to publish a periodical, he insisted on giving a special performance for her benefit. Although a pouring rain kept the audience to a fraction of the expected number, the receipts sufficed to pay for the first issue of Mother Earth.
The scope and purpose of the new monthly, which began to appear in March 1906, were explained at the outset:
Mother Earth will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual.
Emma Goldman edited the monthly throughout its eleven years of existence. In all this time it reflected her views, her interests, her dynamic liveliness. Her fellow editors at one time or another were Max Baginski, Hippolyte Havel, and Alexander Berkman, but the character of the periodical underwent no change as a consequence. Each issue contained at least one poem, brief editorials on the events of the month, articles on current aspects of anarchism, comments on labor strikes and radical activities the world over, reports by Emma on topics of interest to her or on her frequent lecture tours, and finally appeals for money. Many prominent libertarians contributed essays of a philosophical or hortatory nature. It emanated a youthful vigor and an exuberance not found in any other contemporary periodical. Its several thousand readers were devoted to it and supported it with their limited means until the postal censor put an end to the monthly shortly after the declaration of war in 1917.
Mother Earth was not Emma Goldman's sole publishing activity. A firm believer in the efficacy of educational propaganda, she printed and sold a long list of inexpensive tracts. Her table of literature became a prominent feature at all her meetings. When no commercial publisher would accept Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, she collected funds and issued the book herself. The volume has since become a classic in its field, and stands to this day as a living reminder of the dominance of a keen and determined mind over all physical obstacles. Emma also brought out her own collection of lectures, Anarchism and Other Essays. She was able, however, to find a publisher for her impressive volume of lectures on The Social Significance of the Modern Drama, which deals incisively with the European plays that dissect the common failures and fallacies of bourgeois society.
Face to face with an audience, Emma Goldman was a forceful and witty propagandist. Frequently she lifted her rapt hearers to heights from which they envisioned a world wholly free and completely delightful. In cold print, however, her lectures reveal little of her dynamic appeal. They are primarily the work of a forceful agitator: clear, pointed, spirited, but without originality or intellectual rigor.
The faithful disciple of Bakunin and Kropotkin, Emma perceived civilization as "a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against 'society,' that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship." This conflict, she argued, was bound to last as long as the state itself, since it was of the very nature of government to be "conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it," while the instinct of the individual was to resent restriction, combat authority, and seek the benefits of innovation.